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Parenting: Raising the Blind or Creating Blindness

PART ONE


Identity, ego, super ego, love and fear – are they keeping your child from growing?

Love vs. fear and the interference of both.


Does love get in the way of giving your children the freedom to grow, mature, fail, build a full, rich and solid sense of self, or is love the answer? Perhaps we need to redefine love. A love that is not necessarily knowing of outcome, a particular kind of blindness, that requires ingredients rather then a finished product.


Psychological or emotional blindness however is a concept I envision as a skewed perception of oneself in relation to others in the world. In this way blindness makes it difficult to navigate relationships and be a self-relient contributing adult.

To avoid this blindness we need wide open arms that create space for joy and disappointment, as well as the arms offering boundaries, that come from knowing, well meaning and thoughtful parenting.

Fear is not necessarily the evil poison to love, but rather fear lives as a shadow in all of us. It can inform us of our need to know more about ourselves, honor our historical primary wounds (see previous blog post), the courage to loosen our grip on control, and give voice to the unspeakable in the pursuit of freedom. Fear, however, without the passenger of love darkens the world of our children. I think of it as truth accompanied by being held. This informs resiliency. I can know, tolerate and learn from the truth so long as I carry your hugs.


The dance between love and fear, in their purist form, and our courage and vulnerability to embrace both, allows for us to embrace the goodness of being blind without creating blindness. It is often a difficult and tricky balance for me as a parent, often losing its equilibrium. When the dance falls apart and where either “too” much love or “too” much fear inhabits the space, I find it an opportunity to say, “I am sorry” and for the lesson of being fallible.


I would much rather tip and fall in this dance between love and fear than create blindness in a child who does not know either fully. I just pray to the goddesses that I am somewhere in the ball park.

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